Wednesday, February 17, 2016

RANDOM THOUGHTS #254

Steve Cole's thoughts on several
incidents in military history that no one outside of the military
remembers today.

1. During the Kuwait War [1991, also known as the First Gulf War, the Second Gulf War (Iran vs.
Iraq being the First), and as Desert Storm] a brigade of the 2nd
Armored Division was operating as the third brigade of the 1st
Mechanized Division (replacing a brigade that wasn't available for
war). On the third day of the ground campaign, this brigade slammed
into a major Iraqi defensive position manned by Republican Guard
troops. Rather than surrender when attacked, the Republican Guard
units fought fanatically, continuing to fight after their positions
were overrun. They were very good about sneaking around and firing
rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs, think bazookas) into American
vehicles. These did no serious damage to the tanks and only rarely did
they seriously damage a Bradley (infantry carrier). The problem was
that (in the thermal night sights used by the American army) the
impact of an RPG on the side of a vehicle looked like the firing of a
main tank cannon. This created serious confusion, and in a two-hour
battle the US lost five tanks and five Bradleys -- all of them to
American tanks that saw an RPG impact and thought that the vehicle hit
was an Iraqi tank firing its cannon at the Americans. Fortunately,
good vehicle design limited casualties to a dozen killed or
wounded.

2. Remember the Tonkin Gulf battles back
in 1964 in which Vietnamese torpedo boats attacked US destroyers,
inspiring Congress to pass the Tonkin Gulf Resolution and start the
Vietnam War? There is a story behind that. The CIA was using small
boats to smuggle guns up the Vietnamese coast into North Vietnam for
us by US-based rebels trying to overthrow the communist government.
The North Vietnamese, unhappy with this flow of arms, used their navy
(a few torpedo boats) to stop the small CIA boats. The US Navy then
sent groups of destroyers on sweeps into the Gulf to drive the torpedo
boats away and allow the CIA boats to go forward. The Vietnamese
torpedo boats stood their ground (that is, their water) and fought
back. (It also happens that one of the US destroyers had a defective
rudder and heard "torpedoes" in the water every time they
turned left.)

3. It is a meme of the Korean War
that the US troops were stuck on the roads while the clever Chinese
"volunteers" scrambled along mountain trails to get behind
them, trap them, and destroy them. It's a little more complicated
than that. The Chinese did have excellent infantry that was accustomed
to long fast marches. They were light infantry because they simply
didn't own much in the way of heavier weapons like artillery. They
did indeed use a good strategy to sneak down those trails to get
behind American units. At that point, other Chinese troops would use
human wave attacks (as they had no supporting artillery) to get the
front-line US units to retreat down roads that had lots of Chinese
ambushes waiting. Those ambushes cost a lot of American lives and
captured a lot of vehicles and weapons, but in almost every case the
heavier-armed Americans broke through the trap and escaped because
trucks on a road are faster than infantry on a mountain trail. The
Chinese tactic only worked when the Americans didn't know there was
about to be a battle. Once the Americans were actually fighting, they
out-gunned and out maneuvered the Chinese almost every time.

4. Rocket artillery has the advantage of being
easy to move (the launcher is lighter than a cannon as it does not
have to contain the explosion of the fuel) and able to fire a lot more
rounds in less time than a battery of gun artillery. This means it can
really put a lot of explosives into a small spot very quickly. A
conventional cannon bombardment gets started slowly and the enemy has
time to take cover or move. The disadvantages are that each rocket
weighs a lot more than one cannon shell (as the fuel isn't contained
when ignited so the rocket uses a lot more) and rockets are not that
accurate (until GPS made them super-accurate). The normal use for
modern GPS rocket artillery is counter-artillery, in that once a radar
determines where the enemy cannon are, the rocket launcher can smash
anything in that spot. Since there are fewer counter-artillery
missions than other types of artillery missions, the ammunition weight
isn't that big a problem. Modern artillery is taught to move to a
new spot, fire a few shots, then move before the enemy can hit back.
Rocket artillery responds so quickly that this tactic is
nullified.

5. It was the destruction of the Spanish Navy at Trafalgar in
1805 that triggered the wave of independence that swept Latin America.
The French (with a larger fleet) lost more ships but suffered less of
a long-lasting effect. It was the largely undamaged and victorious
British fleet that enforced the famous Monroe Doctrine (the US
proclamation that no European power, i.e., Spain, had the right to
dominate or control trade with Latin America).

About Me

Amarillo Design Bureau, Inc. is a game-publishing company that creates and publishes games based on the Original Series of Star Trek. We have a contract with Paramount Pictures to do so. Posts and blogs that are not directly related to gaming are the opinions of the individuals who write them, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Amarillo Design Bureau, Inc.